This invention relates generally to tide clocks. More particularly, the present invention relates to tide clocks from which the high and low tides may be derived for a given day, as well as for subsequent days.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,259 of the inventor of the present invention, a tide timer provides a live imitation of the rising and the falling water level during each tide. The tide timer provides an indication of the time until the next high or low tide including whether the tide is incoming or outgoing from observation of a water level on the timer. The time of the high or low tide can be derived by reading the time indicated by a moving hand relative to a coordinated time dial which is manually set to the current time of the reading. The tide timer employs a tidal disk which is mounted to a timepiece drive shaft for driving the tidal disk at a uniform rate of one revolution during a whole number of tide time cycles. The face plate has a longitudinal window with the opposite ends denoting high and low water levels. The tidal disk bears a symmetrical figure which is configured to appear in the window as a rising and falling water level moving at a substantially uniform rate on passage across the window under the rotational drive of the disk during each successive tide time cycle to thereby indicate the present position of the tide. The tide times for up to fourteen succeeding days may be determined by cross reference to the solar time dial and a scale affixed to a stationary face plate. While the tide timer of U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,259 provides accurate and reliable information on the times of various tidal events, manual manipulation of the time dial is generally required to obtain an accurate time reading.
Additional patents disclosing tide clock devices to which the invention relates are identified by Patentee and U.S. Pat. No. below.
______________________________________ Patentee U.S. Pat. No. ______________________________________ Wood 3,524,313 Appelberg 3,703,804 Wlodyka 3,708,971 Leone 3,921,383 Banner 4,035,617 ______________________________________